LUMPENPROLETARIAT—On this week’s edition of free speech radio’s (and Free Speech TV’s) Economic Update, Professor of Economics Dr. Richard Wolff has reported that production of cocoa products by Nestlé and Cargill has exploited child labour and slave labour in Mali and Ivory Coast. Dr. Wolff cited the well-known Bloomberg Financial News service for this disturbing news update of modern capitalist modes of production. Escaped slaves, or former child workers, sought legal counsel and filed the case of Doe v. Nestle SA, 05-cv-05133, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles). However, the federal judge has sided with the corporations despite evidence of corporate malfeasance or criminality. This is the second time the judge has dismissed this case, this time arguing that the escaped slaves failed to prove that the slavery was planned from the U.S., such that the case might fall within U.S. jurisdiction. This narrow logic sets a terrible precedent, which makes it easier for corporations to claim plausible deniability in future when corporations are found to engage, directly or through subcontractors, in labour abuses, child labour, or slavery. Saliently, The U.S. Department of Labor actually publishes a yearly report containing a List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor issued by the Bureau of International Labor Affairs. (The December 2014 updated edition of the report listed a total of 74 countries and 136 goods.) Listen (and/or download) here. [1]

DR. RICHARD WOLFF: “This last week, or actually March 10th to be exact, also set an interesting precedent, that is so interesting that my guess is you don’t know much about it. So, I can bring it to your attention. This has to do with a judge in Los Angeles, who decided that two famous food companies—Nestlé, that is perhaps best known as cocoa and chocolate products, and Cargill. These are two monster corporations, major players in the world of mega-corps in the food business.

“And they had gotten themselves into trouble because it turns out that, in Mali and the Ivory Coast, the countries from which most of the cocoa comes, that goes into the chocolate, that we eat, that Nestlé and Cargill process. It turns out that many of the people working in the cocoa fields are children. It turns out that many of them are slaves. That’s right—children bought and sold between Mali and the Ivory Coast in Africa.

“So, to your wonderment, is there still slavery in Africa? The answer is an unqualified, absolutely YES.

More than one million children—

“Just as background:

—some as young as five pick cocoa pods, and then crack them open in the Ivory Coast and perform other manual labour under sometimes hazardous conditions.

“This is the restrained language of the Bloomberg Financial News Service. No radical sheet here screaming about a crime. This is very okay language.

“Six of them found a lawyer—that’s six child slaves. And they told the following story. They were

taken to the Ivory Coast from Mali. They were sold to plantations in the 1990s. They worked 14 hours a day under armed guard without pay six days a week. They slept on floors of locked rooms, were given only food scraps. Those trying to escape were severely beaten [etcetera, etcetera].

“If this sounds familiar, it is. These are the stories of slavery, that one has heard, if one has not been asleep, only it happens now. And, so, a few of these ex-slaves got a lawyer and brought suit in the United States claiming that Nestlé and Cargill knowingly did business with, provided funding for, the local authorities, who were running this slave labour operation. (c. 14:32)

“These companies were stunned. Both of these, Nestlé and Cargill recently—and that is in recent years—set up offices to monitor and to be concerned about corporate responsibility. And they were proud and advertised their corporate responsibility programme. And they insisted that they had nothing to do with it, that they shouldn’t be brought up with this, that this wasn’t their responsibility; they didn’t buy or sell these slaves, the usual.

“The corporation’s defence persuaded the judge. So, why am I telling you about this sad outcome, in which these abused children were unable to find justice in an American court? The reason is: I want you to understand the logic of the judge and of the victorious corporate lawyers. They wanted the judge to rule the way he did, they argued, because, if he didn’t, then it would mean that corporations would have no reason to set up corporate responsibility offices because it wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t protect them from such lawsuits.

“I found this amazing. The corporate responsibility programme clearly didn’t prevent these companies from engaging in business with people doing slave labour, about which these companies, of course, had to know. It didn’t work, these corporate responsibility programmes, very well. Did they?

“So, if the court found against these companies, and they stopped doing it, what difference would it make? Extraordinary the way legal reasoning sometimes works. Extraordinary what is going on in the United States, in our court system, and the way we earn the money, we believe we need as as society.” (c. 17:04)

Mozambique gained its independence in the 1970s, and later in the decade saw the rise of anti-communist party politics. The mid-1990s saw an end to a decade-long civil war in Mozambique. But since the 2014 elections, tensions have arisen again between the two dominant political parties, which has led to political and military unrest. And, adding to the tensions, new and extensive discoveries of coal, natural gas, and other natural resources have attracted predatory capital. Listen (or download) here. [2]

Messina

***

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Africa Today]

AFRICA TODAY—[13 JUN 2016] “The time, here, at radio stations KPFA in Berkeley, at 94.1, KPFB in Berkeley, 89.3 FM, KFCF in Fresno, that’s 88.1 FM in Fresno, and K248BR 97.5, coming from Santa Cruz, and online all the time at www,kpfa.org. The sounds of Thomas Mapfuma. (c. 1:30)

[brief music break by Thomas Mapfuma]

“Shumba” by Thomas Mapfuma

[local community announcements: Oakland Juneteenth Community Picnic, sponsored by the Eastside Arts Alliance, and hosted by KPFA’s Davey D with DJ Pam the Funkstres features Lenny Williams and a special tribute to the life and music of Prince. Also the SF Black Film Festival begins on June 16, 2016.]

[SNIP] (c. 4:40)

“We start off this evening talking about the country of Mozambique with Joseph Hanlon to update you a bit on Mozambique. Since we produced this interview a couple of weeks back, uh, some changes in one of Africa’s newestly independent countries—in the 1970s—when we come back.”

[brief music interlude]

“Since independence in the 1970s, Mozambique has been governed by FRELIMO, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique, the party of Eduardo Mondlane and Samora Machel. FREMILO has won every single election since independence, although its percentage of electoral victory has declined with the elections of 2014.

“RENAMO, an anti-FRELIMO, anti-communist, party was formed in the mid-1970s—finally agreed to a peace settlement in the early 1990s, that ended the decade-long civil war between the two parties. (c. 5:53)

“Since the elections of 2014, tensions have risen again dramatically between the two parties. And, then, internal military and political conflict has ensued. Additionally, to add to the picture, over the last five years, Mozambique has made extensive discoveries of extractive resources, including coal, natural gas, and oil. And, actually, Mozambique is slated to be, I think, third on the African Continent, behind Nigeria and Algeria, in terms of access to gas resources.

“Joining Africa Today to discuss developments in Mozambique is Joseph Hanlon, a long-time writer, researcher, and analyst on developments in Mozambique, served at one time as a policy officer for Jubilee 2000, currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Open University, written books on the Mozambican Flood. He has a regular newsletter, which we’ll give you the address to. He has written on issues of land in Zimbabwe, agriculture in Mozambique, currently working on a book on Bangladesh. His most recent book was Chickens and Beer. And he joins us, as he has over the years, to talk about developments in his favourite country of Mozambique.

“Joe, thanks for joining us today.” (c. 7:06)

DR. JOSEPH HANLON: “Well, I’m pleased to be back to talk to you again, Walter.”

PROFESSOR WALTER TURNER: “Good. I read in one of your bulletins—the Mozambican Formation Bulletin, which you started in 2000 or so, and right now this is the third, 300th issue.”

DR. JOSEPH HANLON: “Well, I mean I started it when Carlos Cardoso, the journalist was assassinated and I covered the trial and so on. And I just, sort of, kept going with it and people subscribed to it. Right now, I’ve got about 5,000 subscribers.”

PROFESSOR WALTER TURNER: “Whoah!”

DR. JOSEPH HANLON: “And it’s free. So, any of your listeners can subscribe to it. It’s easy, if you just send me a message at j.hanlon@open.ac.uk. And it’s sort of erratic because I do it when I can space it around other things. But it’s free.” (c. 8:04) [SNIP]

PROFESSOR WALTER TURNER: “Okay. Well, I’ll usually save ’em; and I’ll go back when I can read them when I have the moment there.

“Was there ever a moment when you thought about stopping the bulletin.”

DR. JOSEPH HANLON: “Well, no, just because I do it because I’m interested in Mozambique. And I like Mozambique. And I’ve got so many friends there, now. But I go back and forth. And I just like to write about it and know about it.

“You know; being a journalist, you’re a storyteller. And, so, you wanna tell the stories.”

PROFESSOR WALTER TURNER: “Your last book, that we spoke about, which was out was Chickens and Beer. And your newer book is gonna be on Bangladesh.

“Chickens and Beer was about the—it was an analysis of agriculture, was it not, in Mozambique?” (c. 8:47)

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

***

“War” (live) by Bob Marley and The Wailers

“And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes
that hold our brothers in Angola,
In Mozambique,
South Africa
Sub-human bondage
Have been toppled,
Utterly destroyed –
Well, everywhere is war –
Me say war.”

***

[1] Also see writings by Dr. Joseph Hanlon at The Guardian, which offers the following bio:

“Joseph Hanlon is visiting senior fellow at the department of international development of the London School of Economics and honorary research fellow in the school of environment and development of the University of Manchester. He is co-author of Just Give Money to the Poor. He has been writing about Mozambique since 1978. He is editor of the Mozambique Political Process Bulletin and co-author of Do bicycles equal development in Mozambique? His next book, Zimbabwe Takes Back its Land, will be published this year.”

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—The New York Times has decided to take us all on a trip down memory lane by revisiting the imperialist resumé of Democrat Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton with the publication of a major two-part exposé entitled “The Libya Gamble” on Hillary Clinton’s role in the overthrow of the Libyan government in 2011, as Obama’s Secretary of State. We can imagine the nightmarish wrath a President Hillary would unleash on the world.

One thing we can be wary of is the hawkish lengths an aspiring first female president, such as Hillary Clinton, would go within the realm of patriarchy to prove she’s as tough as her male counterparts. Think Margaret Thatcher on steroids.

By this metric, the American ruling class, particularly oil profiteers, must be pleased with Hillary Clinton’s record as Secretary of State when she provided President Obama the excuse he needed to destabalise Libya and create further pretext for endless US/NATO military predation everywhere, except inside the territories of its corrupt allies, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.

As The New York Times‘ Pulitzer Prize-winning Jo Becker explained, “when Colonel Gaddafi threatened to crush the Arab Spring protests in Libya, she helped persuade President Obama to join other countries in bombing his forces to prevent a feared massacre.” Of course, the hypocrisy in this reasoning is blatant, for we recall that the Obama administration literally cracked skulls in the USA, as it crushed the Occupy Movement across the nation, even as it purported to defend the right to assemble and to petition one’s government for a redress of grievances abroad.

During the Democrat Party’s presidential debate in New Hampshire last year, moderator, and ABC News host, Martha Raddatz questioned Hillary Clinton about the vicious conquest of Libya. Clinton’s main competitor for the Democratic presidential nomination and self-described socialist, Bernie Sanders, added this somewhat qualified stance on regime change, or US/NATO imperialism:

“The truth is, it is relatively easy for a powerful nation like America to overthrow a dictator, but it is very hard to predict the unintended consequences and the turmoil and the instability that follows after you overthrow that dictator. So, I think Secretary Clinton and I have a fundamental disagreement: I’m not quite the fan of regime change that I believe she is.”

Messina

***

DEMOCRACY NOW!—[3 MAR 2016] The New York Times has published a major two-part exposé titled “The Libya Gamble” on how then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed President Obama to begin bombing Libya five years ago this month. Today, Libya is a failed state and a haven for terrorists. How much should Hillary Clinton be blamed for the crisis? We speak to journalist Scott Shane of The New York Times.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript [by Democracy Now!]. Copy may not be in its final form. [Accessed 3 MAR 2016 10:37 PDT]

NERMEENSHAIKH: Five years ago this month, the United States and allied nations began bombing Libya, striking forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The Obama administration said the strikes were needed to enforce a no-fly zone and to protect Libyan protesters who took to the streets as part of the Arab Spring. Inside the Obama administration, there was a deep division over whether the U.S. should intervene militarily. One of the most hawkish members of Obama’s Cabinet was Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state.

The New York Times has just published two major pieces [part one, part two] looking at Clinton’s role pushing for the bombing of Libya. The special report is titled “The Libya Gamble.” In a moment, we’ll be joined by Scott Shane, one of the report’s co-authors, but first a video package produced by The New York Times.

JO BECKER: Hillary Clinton’s role in the military intervention that ousted Muammar Gaddafi in Libya is getting new scrutiny as she runs for president. The U.S. relationship with Libya has long been complicated. Colonel Gaddafi, who ruled from 1969 until 2011, was an eccentric dictator linked to terrorism. Still, when he gave up his nuclear program a decade ago and provided information about al-Qaeda, he became an ally of sorts. In 2009, when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, she welcomed one of Colonel Gaddafi’s sons to Washington.

SECRETARY OF STATEHILLARYCLINTON: We deeply value the relationship between the United States and Libya.

JO BECKER: But two years later, when Colonel Gaddafi threatened to crush the Arab Spring protests in Libya, she helped persuade President Obama to join other countries in bombing his forces to prevent a feared massacre.

SECRETARY OF STATEHILLARYCLINTON: This operation has already saved many lives, but the danger is far from over.

JO BECKER: The military campaign ended up ousting Colonel Gaddafi, and Secretary Clinton was welcomed to Libya on a victory tour. A few days later, Colonel Gaddafi was killed by opposition fighters.

SECRETARY OF STATEHILLARYCLINTON: We came, we saw, he died.

JO BECKER: But the new Western-backed government proved incapable of uniting Libya. And in the end, the strongman’s death led to chaos. When four Americans were killed by terrorists in Benghazi in 2012, it revealed just how bad things had gotten. Colonel Gaddafi’s huge arsenal of weapons has shown up in the hands of terrorists in places like Gaza, Syria, Nigeria and Mali. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have fled through Libya on boats. Many have drowned. And the power vacuum has allowed ISIS to build its most dangerous outpost on the Libyan coast. Today, just 300 miles from Europe, Libya is a failed state. Meanwhile, back at home, Mrs. Clinton has struggled to defend the decision to intervene.

HILLARYCLINTON: But I’m not giving up on Libya, and I don’t think anybody should. We’ve been at this a couple of years.

MARTHARADDATZ: But were mistakes made?

HILLARYCLINTON: Well, there’s always a retrospective to say what mistakes were made. But I know that we offered a lot of help, and I know it was difficult for the Libyans to accept help.

AMYGOODMAN: That video by The New York Times accompanies a major two-part series [part one, part two] on Hillary Clinton titled “The Libya Gamble,” written by Jo Becker and Scott Shane. Scott Shane is joining us now from Baltimore. He’s also author of a new book called Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone, about the first American deliberately killed in a drone strike, Anwar al-Awlaki. The book just won the 2016 Lionel Gelber Prize.

Scott Shane, welcome to Democracy Now! Let’s start with this two-part series, “Clinton, ‘Smart Power’ and a Dictator’s Fall.” Talk about Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and how she led the charge, or what she advised President Obama in Libya.

SCOTTSHANE: Well, five years ago, there were—there was a question about what to do as Gaddafi’s forces approached Benghazi. The Europeans and the Arab League were calling for action. No one really knew what the outcome would be, but there was certainly a very serious threat to a large number of civilians in Benghazi. But, you know, the U.S. was still involved in two big wars, and the sort of heavyweights in the Obama administration were against getting involved—Robert Gates, the defensive secretary; Joe Biden, the vice president; Tom Donilon, the national security adviser.

And Secretary Clinton had been meeting with representatives of Britain, France and the Arab countries. And she sort of essentially called in from Paris and then from Cairo, and she ended up tipping the balance and essentially convincing President Obama, who later described this as a 51-49 decision, to join the other countries in the coalition to bomb Gaddafi’s forces.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Well, Hillary Clinton has argued, in her defense, that it’s still too early to tell what the effects of the intervention have been, and that perhaps accounts for why she’s pushing for more military involvement in Syria. But Obama, on the other hand, as you point out in your piece, says the Libya experience has made him question each military intervention by asking, “Should we intervene militarily? Do we have an answer for the day after?” So, Scott Shane, can you lay out what you explain happened in Libya the day after, as it were?

SCOTTSHANE: Well, you know, for a few months, it looked like things might go reasonably well. There was some attention to restoring Libya’s oil industry. And the optimism was based in part on the idea that this is a relatively small country population-wise, about 6 million people. It did not have the Sunni-Shia split that you see in many Muslim countries, and it had plenty of money from oil to rebuild. So, briefly, there was this sort of moment of optimism. And Secretary Clinton made her visit. And they were—you know, her people were actually thinking this would be perhaps a centerpiece of her record as secretary of state.

But what happened was the militias that had participated in the fight against Gaddafi, you know, essentially aligned with different tribes in different cities, and it proved impossible for these mostly Western-educated—in some cases, somewhat detached—opposition leaders to pull the country together, and eventually it sort of dissolved into civil war.

AMYGOODMAN: You say—in that piece we just heard, the tape that caught Hillary Clinton saying, “We came, we saw, he died.” Explain.

SCOTTSHANE: Well, you know, in some ways, I think she would see that as unfair. She was giving a series of TV interviews, and that was in a break between interviews. The reporter for the next take was just sitting down in the chair, and an aide handed her a Blackberry with the news that Gaddafi—you know, first reports that Gaddafi might be dead. And that was her sort of, I think she would say, you know, exaggerated, humorous reaction. But, you know—but it did capture, I think, the fact that she had become very involved in this effort that first—that sort of began as protecting civilians and sort of evolved into overthrowing Gaddafi. And she was eager to see an end to what had become a surprisingly drawn-out affair, given the fact that this very large alliance of NATO and Arab countries were on the rebels’ side. So I think she was relieved and pleased that Gaddafi’s rule was over and that he was no longer around to make trouble.

AMYGOODMAN: During the Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire last year, ABC News host Martha Raddatz questioned Hillary Clinton about her support for the 2011 invasion of Libya, which toppled Muammar Gaddafi.

MARTHARADDATZ: Secretary Clinton, I want to circle back to something that your opponents here have brought up. Libya is falling apart. The country is a haven for ISIS and jihadists, with an estimated 2,000 ISIS fighters there today. You advocated for that 2011 intervention and called it “smart power at its best.” And yet, even President Obama said the U.S. should have done more to fill the leadership vacuum left behind. How much responsibility do you bear for the chaos that followed elections?

HILLARYCLINTON: Well, first, let’s remember why we became part of a coalition to stop Gaddafi from committing massacres against his people. The United States was asked to support the Europeans and the Arab partners that we had. And we did a lot of due diligence about whether we should or not, and eventually, yes, I recommended, and the president decided, that we would support the action to protect civilians on the ground. And that led to the overthrow of Gaddafi.

I think that what Libya then did by having a full free election, which elected moderates, was an indication of their crying need and desire to get on the right path. Now, the whole region has been rendered unstable, in part because of the aftermath of the Arab Spring, in part because of the very effective outreach and propagandizing that ISIS and other terrorist groups do.

MARTHARADDATZ: Senator Sanders?

SEN. BERNIESANDERS: The truth is, it is relatively easy for a powerful nation like America to overthrow a dictator, but it is very hard to predict the unintended consequences and the turmoil and the instability that follows after you overthrow that dictator. So, I think Secretary Clinton and I have a fundamental disagreement: I’m not quite the fan of regime change that I believe she is.

AMYGOODMAN: “I’m not quite the fan of regime change that … she is,” says Bernie Sanders in that debate with Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. Scott Shane, from Iraq and her vote for the war with Iraq, which of course did lead to regime change, to Libya, talk about the goal of Hillary Clinton and whether that was even different from the goal of President Obama, who she does wrap herself around now in all of her presidential campaigning.

SCOTTSHANE: I think what we found is that there is a subtle but distinct difference between President Obama and Secretary Clinton on the question of sort of activism and interventionism abroad. And, you know, in a situation like Libya, there are no good choices. It’s certainly conceivable that if she had tipped the other way, and the U.S. and the Europeans and others had not gotten involved, that perhaps Gaddafi would have slaughtered a whole lot of civilians, and we would be, you know, posing different questions to her today.

But, you know, what we found was that President Obama is, not surprisingly, very shaped by the Iraq experience, which he’s had to cope with the still ongoing aftermath of the decision to invade in 2003 all these years later. She, of course, has been in government longer, and I think she—you know, her aides say that she was also influenced by genocide in Rwanda, which taught her the cost of inaction in a situation like that, and by the experience in the Balkans, which sort of cut both ways. But, you know, I think she drew the lesson that intervention could prevent even larger massacres and do some good, as imperfect as the outcome was there. So they kind of look back to these different historical experiences and draw different conclusions.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Well, you report in your piece in the Times that shortly after the air campaign began in 2011, there was the possibility of a 72-hour ceasefire, potentially leading to a negotiated exit for Gaddafi. Why was that offer not taken seriously by the American military?

SCOTTSHANE: Well, you know, there were—there was a whole array of attempts to come up with some sort of soft exit for Gaddafi. Perhaps he would stay in Libya, perhaps he would go elsewhere. But I think the bottom line was that the Americans and the Europeans and the other Arab—and the Arab countries that were involved in this, all basically felt that Gaddafi, who was basically a megalomaniac, who had been in office for 40 years and sort of saw him as the savior of his country, just would not, when push came to shove, be willing to cede power. And they felt that any kind of ceasefire, he would use just to kind of regroup his forces and extend the fighting. Whether that was true or not, you know, history will judge.

AMYGOODMAN: And the issue of this being a failed state right now and Hillary Clinton’s responsibility here—of course, as is President Obama, but she was the secretary of state who was advising him, meeting with people on the ground, making her suggestions on pushing forward with war?

SCOTTSHANE: Yeah, I mean, you know, one reason we did that series is that it appears that intervention—when, how and whether to intervene in other countries, particularly Muslim countries—remains sort of a pressing question for American presidents. And since she’s running for the presidency, this is, you know, perhaps a revealing case study of how she comes out in these situations.

But, you know, there are—there is no good example of intervention or non-intervention in these countries since the Arab Spring and before that. I mean, you have Iraq, where we spent years occupying, a very tragic outcome. You have Libya, where we intervened but did not occupy and pretty much, you know, stayed out of it afterwards—not a good outcome. And you have Syria, where we have really not intervened, have not occupied, and you’ve had this terrible civil war with huge casualties. So, you know, some people in Washington are questioning whether there is any right answer in these extremely complicated countries in the Middle East.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Well, given the spread of ISIS in Libya, you report that some of Obama’s top national security aides are now pushing for a second American military intervention in Libya.

SCOTTSHANE: Yeah, I mean, one of the ironies here is that, you know, you’ve almost come full circle, but instead of targeting Gaddafi and Gaddafi’s forces, the U.S. is now targeting ISIS. And the—you know, in that debate, Martha Raddatz uses the number 2,000 ISIS fighters; now it’s up to 5,000 or 6,000. You know, on the coast of Libya, they have formed the most important outpost for the Islamic State outside Syria and Iraq, and the Europeans and the Americans are very worried about it. So, there was actually an airstrike on an ISIS camp in western Libya, where there were Tunisians responsible for some attacks in Tunisia, and now they’re looking at possible attacks on the major ISIS stronghold in Libya, which is in Sirte on the coast.

AMYGOODMAN: In your piece, you talk about the memo afterwards that highlights Hillary Rodham Clinton—HRC, as it’s put—role, talking about her leadership, ownership, stewardship of this country’s Libya policy from start to finish, with an eye to the presidential campaign. Can you talk about this, as you put it, this brag sheet?

SCOTTSHANE: Well, that memo was written in 2011, when Gaddafi had fallen. And, you know, it looked like—you know, they were holding this up as sort of an alternative to the George W. Bush invasion of Iraq, a coalition in which the U.S. was not even the leader and organizer, really, and it was a very broad coalition of nations that had intervened. They saw this as what she referred to as “smart power.” And they really thought this might be something they would hold up as a very successful part of her record as she ran for president. As we’ve seen, that did not happen, and, you know, you don’t hear them raise the subject of Libya on the campaign trail at all.

AMYGOODMAN: Scott Shane, we have to end the show, but we’re going to do Part 2 of our conversation after the show about your new book, Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone. Scott Shane, national security reporter for The New York Times. And we’ll link to this major exposé [part one, part two] you did on Hillary Clinton’s role in “The Libya Gamble.”

That does it for the show. We have this late, breaking news: Honduras—the Honduran indigenous and environmental organizer Berta Cáceres has been assassinated. She was one of the leading organizers for indigenous land rights in Honduras, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize.

Who are you?” the late Muammar Gaddafi once rhetorically asked in a famous speech of his towards the end of his reign; (rightly) questioning the legitimacy of those seeking to over-throw his government at the time, calling them extremists, foreign agents, rats and drug-addicts. He was laughed at, unfairly caricatured, ridiculed and incessantly demonized; a distasteful parody video poking fun at the late Libyan leader even went viral on social media; evidently the maker of the video, an Israeli, thought the Libyan colloquial Arabic word “Zenga” (which means an Alleyway) sounded funny enough that he extracted it from one of Gaddafi’s speeches, looped it on top of a hip-hop backing track and voila… he got himself a hit video which was widely (and shamefully) circulated with a “revolutionary” zeal in the Arab world. We shared, we laughed, he died.

But the bloody joke is on all of us; Gaddafi knew what he was talking about; right from the get-go, he accused the so-called Libyan rebels of being influenced by Al-Qaeda ideology and Ben Laden’s school of thought; no one had taken his word for it of course, not even a little bit. I mean why should we have? After all, wasn’t he a vile, sex-centric dictator hell-bent on massacring half of the Libyan population while subjecting the other half to manic raping sprees with the aid of his trusted army of Viagra-gobbling, sub-Saharan mercenaries? At least that’s what we got from the visual cancer that is Al Jazeera channel and its even more acrid Saudi counterpart Al-Arabiya in their heavily skewed coverage of NATO’s vicious conquest of Libya. Plus Gaddafi did dress funny; why would anyone trust a haggard, weird-looking despot dressed in colorful rags when you have well-groomed Zionists like Bernard Henry Levy, John McCain and Hillary Clinton at your side, smiling and flashing the victory sign in group photo-ops, right?

Gaddafi called them drug-addicted, Islamic fundamentalists; we know them as ISIS… it doesn’t seem much of a joke now, does it? And ISIS is what had been in store for us all along; the “revolutionary” lynching and sodomization of Muammar Gaddafi amid manic chants of “Allahu Akbar”, lauded by many at the time as some sort of a warped triumph of the good of popular will (read: NATO-sponsored mob rule) over the evil of dictatorship (sovereign state), was nothing but a gory precursor for the future of the country and the region; mass lynching of entire populations in Libya, Syria and Iraq and the breakup of key Arab states into feuding mini-statelets. The gruesome video of Colonel Gaddafi’s murder, which puts to shame the majority of ISIS videos in terms of unhinged brutality and gore, did not invoke the merest of condemnations back then, on the contrary; everyone seemed perfectly fine with the grotesque end of the Libyan “tyrant”… except that it was only the beginning of a new and unprecedented reign of terror courtesy of NATO’s foot-soldiers and GCC-backed Islamic insurgents.

The rapid proliferation of trigger-happy terrorist groups and Jihadi factions drenched in petrodollars in Libya was not some sort of an intelligence failure on the part of western governments or a mere by-product of the power vacuum left by a slain Gaddafi; it was a deliberate, calculated policy sought after and implemented by NATO and its allies in the Gulf under the cringe-inducing moniker “Friends of Libya” (currently known as the International Coalition against ISIS) to turn the north-African country into the world’s largest ungovernable dumpster of weapons, al-Qaida militants and illegal oil trading.

So it is safe to say that UNSC resolution 1973, which practically gave free rein for NATO to bomb Libya into smithereens, has finally borne fruit… and it’s rotten to its nucleus, you can call the latest gruesome murder of 21 Egyptian fishermen and workers by the Libyan branch of the Islamic State exhibit “A”, not to mention of course the myriad of daily killings, bombings and mini-civil wars that are now dotting the entire country which, ever since the West engineered its coup-d’etat against the Gaddafi government, have become synonymous with the bleak landscape of lawlessness and death that is “Libya” today. And the gift of NATO liberation is sure to keep on giving for years of instability and chaos to come.

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi died after being stabbed with a bayonet in the anus and not in a firefight as originally claimed by Libyan authorities, according to a report on the dictator’s last hours.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Gaddafi was already bleeding from head wounds caused by blast shrapnel as he tried to flee Sirte, his hometown. The charity obtained unedited mobile footage that showed militants abusing Gaddafi as they took him into custody in October 2011.

“As he was being led on to the main road, a militiaman stabbed him in his anus with what appears to have been a bayonet, causing another rapidly bleeding wound,” the report said.

Gaddafi’s naked and apparently lifeless body was shown on mobile footage being put into an ambulance and driven to Misrata in a convoy. Earlier, fighters from Benghazi had claimed to have shot Gaddafi dead during a row with fighters from Misrata.

Gaddafi, his son Mutassim, defence minister Abu-Bakr Younis and other followers were buried in a secret place in the desert to prevent his grave becoming a shrine. A total of 103 members of the convoy died in the firefight. Evidence collated by Human Rights Watch suggested that some of the men were summarily executed.

The son of Gaddafi’s defence minister, also called Younis, who was present at the scene of the dictator’s capture, told Human Rights Watch of the confrontation with the rebels while trying to escape from Sirte.

Two Nato missiles forced the group to leave the cars and escape on foot, seeking shelter in a drainage ditch. A bodyguard hurled grenades at approaching militants but one grenade “hit the concrete wall and bounced back to fall between Muammar Gaddafi and Abu Bakr Younis”, Younis junior said.

“The shrapnel hit my father and he fell down to the ground. Muammar Gaddafi was also injured by the grenade, on the left side of his head,” he said.

“Our findings call into question the assertion by Libyan authorities that Muammar Gaddafi was killed in crossfire, and not after his capture,” Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, said.